All Published Books Censored By Tunisian Authorities

The IFEX Tunisian Monitoring Group (TMG) members welcomed the announcement of Tunisia’s President Ben Ali on 27 May 2005 to abolish the legal submission procedure (and related sanctions) applicable to the press. However, the organisation’s members remain concerned that the Tunisian legal submission system continues to be used as an indirect form of censorship for other media, in particular books.

The organisation’s members hence request that the Tunisian authorities stop misusing the legal submission procedure to block the distribution of books in the country and therefore release all the blocked books and publications in Tunisia.

BACKGROUND INFORMATION:


The Tunisian legal submission system, which is governed by Articles 4 – 12 of the 1975 Press Code and a 1977 decree, is in practice used as an indirect form of censorship.

The printer (or publisher) of a book deposits a given number of copies with the Ministry of Culture, the National Library, the Ministry of the Interior and the Public Prosecutor's Office. In exchange, the printer (or publisher) should receive a receipt (ricipissi) from the administration, which he or she rarely gets in practice. In fact, the authorities require printing (or publishing) houses to await approval by the Ministry of the Interior in the form of a receipt before allowing the printer to proceed with the distribution of a given book. In practice, this means that books are often locked up for years and might never be published if no receipt is ever issued. Therefore, the legal submission procedure amounts to a hidden form of censorship, preventing the free distribution of books.

The misuse of the Tunisian legal submission procedure by the authorities has led to a great number of books never being released into free circulation. The IFEX-TMG found out that the submission procedure, as it is in practice, has blocked the publication of some books for 10 years or more. The misuse also encourages widespread self-censorship in the country.

Many of the banned books have been written by prominent intellectual and democracy advocates, like Mohamed Talbi and Moncef Marzouki. Many of the banned books have also been edited by centres or groups committed to scientific research and human rights education, such as the Temimi Foundation, the Arab Institute for Human Rights (AIHR) and the Tunisian Association of Democratic Women (ATFD).

Alert - Tunisia

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